GamePolitics - Comments for "Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?"http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue
Comments for "Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?"enRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292862
<p>Well I think there are two issues...first, it&#39;s less that someone &quot;sits on&quot; data, and moer it can&#39;t get published due to it being non-significant.</p>
<p>Two, there&#39;s been a lot of talk in psychology lately about how, if scholars get a non-significant finding, by switching up the statistical analysis, it can often be converted from non-significant to significant (see Simons et al., 2011 in Psychological Science).&nbsp; In other words, social science methods are often loosey-goosey enough that the results are not set in stone.</p>
Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:57:48 +0000Avalongodcomment 292862 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292857
<p>To be honest, it depends a lot on the field of research. I can only speak to my own (astrophysics). Here, it&#39;s not uncommon for new analysis methods on surveys to not show promising results. While the projects don&#39;t get officially abandoned, they often get shuffled to a lower priority than other projects. This can lead to unfinished papers lying in wait until either they&#39;re forgotten or superseded by something similar done by someone else.</p>
<p>So it&#39;s not really a case of scientists deciding not to publish at all, but focusing their efforts on projects that will have statistically significant results. I can&#39;t speak to other fields from personal experience, though.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 21:31:43 +0000Infophilecomment 292857 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292855
<p>Considering that it has since been revealed that Frederic Wertham falsified his research into comic books, it makes one wonder if Brad Bushman, Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile, etc. has falsified their research to make their hypotheses fit.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 19:45:36 +0000BearDogg-Xcomment 292855 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292854
<p>I wonder how often skipping publication is actually done though. &nbsp;If you are working on a grant, failing to publish is no minor deal. &nbsp;Even if you are not, if we are talking academics here (as opposed to think tanks) publishing is how you stay employed and is a significant metric in your career advancement (or even maintenance). &nbsp;Sitting on something that could go in a journal and failing to submit it is usually not going to be in the researcher&#39;s best interests even if the results go against what the sponsor wanted.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:27:14 +0000Neenekocomment 292854 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292853
<p>I can believe that, but I do encounter a lot of people who believe it is not scientific if you go in with a specific predicted outcome. &nbsp;These are the same people that tend to complain that you should not present theories like they are facts *headdesk*</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:24:38 +0000Neenekocomment 292853 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292851
<p>That&#39;s one possibility. The alternative is that if the research doesn&#39;t produce the wanted result, it simply isn&#39;t published. In fact, it doesn&#39;t even have to be that the result is wanted - research often doesn&#39;t get published when it doesn&#39;t produce a statistically-significant result. In the case of video games causing violence, there are only three possible outcomes of research:</p>
<p>1. Statistically significant correlation between games and more real-world violence.</p>
<p>2. Statistically significant correlation between games and less real-world violence.</p>
<p>3. No significant correlation found either way.</p>
<p>So, if someone does a study and it finds no correlation, that&#39;s less likely to be submitted and harder to publish than if it does find something. Additionally, since the common wisdom is that video games might increase violence, but not the other way around, if case 2 does come up (either by chance, by a poorly-designed study, or by an actual correlation in this direction), the researchers are more likely to assume something went wrong in their study and either not publish or go back and redo it.</p>
<p>As a result, there doesn&#39;t actually need to be any actual foul play going on in order to create a bias in the literature here.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:23:45 +0000Infophilecomment 292851 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292850
<p>I think what they are getting at is that the researchers will come up with the answer first, design a test that they think will prove it, then declare it proven regardless of what the data from the test actually shows.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 15:55:48 +0000E. Zachary Knightcomment 292850 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292849
<p>I&#39;d like to suggest a related subject for research.&nbsp; Evidence shows a correlation where politicians, pundits, and these agenda-driven &#39;researchers&#39; all learn to hate the United States Constitution, especially the inalienable rights granted by the 1st 10 Amendments.</p>
<p>Obviously there are negative effects. I know it! We just need to find them!</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 14:30:10 +0000Cyberdodocomment 292849 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292848
<p>I voted for more research.</p>
<p>I would love to see more, but I think it will need to wait. &nbsp;Right now there is too much political energy behind it. &nbsp; The entire field of how things like narrative and language shape our world view and norms is really fascinating and there are real effects in play, but they are not the simple &#39;game violence =&gt; real violence&#39; model funders want proven or disprove.</p>
<p>Hopefully someday games can be folded into that same area of research and take their place with passive consumption and maybe find some interesting overlap between games and the psychological effects you get from places like message boards and how those reinforce, distil, and normalize various patterns.</p>
<p>But right now, I do not think the discussion can be had with any real maturity. &nbsp;We have one side ranting about how games cause violence like mass shootings, and another side ranting about how it is just fantasy and thus has zero impact, and both sides are, at least according to similar non-video game related work over the last half century, wrong. &nbsp;Neither community though seems willing to see the more complex reality for fear of the other side declaring victory for their extreme.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 14:23:00 +0000Neenekocomment 292848 at http://gamepolitics.comRe: Poll: Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?http://gamepolitics.com/2014/03/06/poll-should-violent-video-game-research-continue#comment-292847
<p>Actually... it kinda is.</p>
<p>In research you start with a question and an answer, you use that answer to design a test to determine if works or not. &nbsp; Hypothesis, theory, experiment.</p>
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 14:16:22 +0000Neenekocomment 292847 at http://gamepolitics.com